1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of brand management software solutions, and more particularly in the field of using data pertaining to social media to identify recommended actions for optimally managing a brand.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
Social networks have become one of the dominant forms of consumer interaction with the Internet in the last few years. Accordingly, numerous innovations have been made by various players to add advertising capabilities and to otherwise aid in the monetization of social network traffic. As these social networks have become so dominant, enterprises—particularly those with strong consumer brands—have moved more or less vigorously to adopt social networks for corporate use. It is commonplace today, for example, for consumer brands (and some business-to-business brands as well) to monitor social networks closely (particularly Facebook™ and Twitter) in order to gage how their customers perceive the brands and the products associated with them. Moreover, many companies today are attempting to engage in meaningful “conversations” with consumers, both customers and prospective customers, using social media, for example by responding to complaints made in social media (that is, content associated with social networks), or by identifying community influencers and attempting to market to those individuals to reinforce a company's brand.
Several challenges are emerging as these trends take place. Because there are several social networks that are relevant to any given brand, each with its own usage paradigm, it is difficult for brand managers to collate content from various social networks and make sense of it as an overall picture of what a particular brand's perception among consumers is.